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With economic development and environmental changes, large distributors in first- and second-tier cities are facing severe marginalization as shopping malls, supermarkets, and specialty stores rapidly develop and mature, leaving them with shrinking living space. For distributors targeting third-tier markets, the current situation is at best 'a storm brewing.' As long as they seriously and fully build terminal networks covering county towns and strive to transition from simply providing products to downstream customers to providing services, they can still occupy a very favorable position, find space for survival and development in this process, and gradually achieve transition and transformation (in reality, few local enterprises dare to and can complete the shift from a wholesale-dominated channel system to a retail-dominated one in the short term). Summarizing experience in managing distributors, small and medium distributors can improve themselves from the following aspects to break through. For reference:
I. Correct Business Attitude: 'One Center, Three Persistences'
'One Center' means centering on one brand. In business, it doesn't matter how many products you have; only by making one product deep, detailed, refined, and thorough can you achieve results others cannot. For small and medium distributors to succeed, they must first have an accurate positioning of the market for the products they represent. For example, Distributor A has a warehouse of over 1,000 square meters containing white liquor (high, medium, and low grade), beer, instant noodles, laundry powder, beverages, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, etc. The distributor introduces himself as the distributor with the most products in the county, but why isn't he profitable? A discerning eye can see he has the problem of 'greedy for more.' Because he worries that representing a single brand may have limited sales and cannot bear various costs, he lacks loyalty to a single brand, resulting in a lack of recognition and support from the manufacturer. Terminals fear that distributors frequently change brands, causing a gap in marketing services, so terminals are unwilling to cooperate deeply with him. Distributor B, with the entire company's best efforts, focused on a Northeast brand, from less than 400,000 yuan in sales in the first year to over 6 million yuan in the second year, and continued to exceed 6 million yuan for four consecutive years. Naturally, the success of this brand is like a Chinese parasol tree, bringing him benefits and also attracting golden phoenixes (for distributors representing a single brand, choosing the brand is most important).
Three Persistences
- Have confidence For an individual, confidence is the key to success. For distributors, confidence is mainly reflected in the following aspects:
a. Have confidence in the chosen product Any product may have problems that make you dissatisfied, but you must look at the problem from the surface, not from a single point. Distributors should not have too high expectations of the manufacturer, because manufacturers face too many distributors and cannot serve one distributor exclusively. Enterprises try to provide good services to distributors, but facing a large group of distributors and their own resource limitations, there will inevitably be unsatisfactory aspects in the work. Distributors should communicate more with manufacturers, obtain timely support, and ensure smooth channels.
b. Have confidence in yourself Many distributors, when encountering difficulties, always ask themselves if they can do it, which shows a lack of confidence. No product can guarantee that all distributors will make money. The success of product sales requires distributors to fully utilize manufacturer resources and give full play to their unique business capabilities.
c. Have confidence in your team Caring for employees equals caring for your products. Caring for all aspects of employees is the core issue. Listen to employees' voices and respond. A good team is exciting, stimulating, full of support and success, liked and welcomed; it keeps everyone moving forward through encouragement and support. Conversely, a bad team is a terrible place, like a prison.
Have patience Any product is meant to cultivate consumers' consumption habits. Cultivating a person's consumption habit takes time, and cultivating a group of loyal consumers takes even more time.
Have endurance Endurance is mainly reflected in whether you have sufficient funds to operate the market and whether you reasonably use your limited funds to ensure long-term persistence.
II. Continuously Improve Business Management Capabilities
Compared with large distributors, although small and medium distributors have flexible business mechanisms and sharper market senses, due to their own 'shortcomings,' most are in a weak state and trapped in survival difficulties, leading to particularly prominent low-level operations lacking market common sense. Distributors can improve from the following three aspects:
Train your salespeople well and build a sales team that can endure hardship and has drive. Employees don't need to be many, but they must be capable. The biggest cost in business is not expenses, but putting untrained employees into the market. Because untrained employees going out to do business not only fail to produce results but also disrupt the market. You should carefully arrange a business training plan for employees, including five aspects: product knowledge, business skills, business processes, sales policies, and key points to note. If you lack experience in this area, you can request relevant training materials from the enterprise.
Formulate a stable sales policy so employees feel there is a future in their work. The formulation of sales policies is very important. You must inform salespeople in writing that if they achieve a certain performance, they will get a certain reward. Because salespeople often calculate for themselves how much return they will get from a month's effort. Therefore, a good sales policy is very important for business. In this regard, two things need to be done: first, formulate sales and reward commission policies for salespeople; second, formulate commission policies and implementation and inspection systems.
According to manufacturer requirements, do a good job in promotion arrangements and terminal management Recently, some distributors have carried out promotional activities according to manufacturer policies. Most were successful, but a small portion failed. Why? Because their market foundation work was not done well. Imagine, if distribution and customer relationship work are not done well, and you suddenly copy a model for promotion, it will definitely not be worth the loss. Therefore, when doing this kind of work, you should arrange a progress plan. Only when you have the following data can promotions be safe and effective: first, clear data on terminals where products have been distributed; second, sales data from terminals; third, salespeople have received the commissions stipulated in the sales policy. This is a solid foundation for promotional activities.
III. Novel and Proactive Publicity and Promotion
Although manufacturers will do overall publicity, advertising, and promotion, because there are many distributors and local conditions vary greatly, there will inevitably be places that are not covered. Distributors should combine local actual conditions, do their own publicity and promotion, spend small money, and accomplish big things. For example: relationship marketing, interpersonal relationship marketing, joint marketing, complementary marketing, team marketing, etc.
IV. Distribution of Product Profits
Product profits are distributed among distributors, second-tier wholesalers, and terminal stores. To have stable second-tier wholesalers and core terminals, it is necessary to handle the distribution of profits well.
Distributors' profits come from the profit turnover rate of products. For distributors' profitability, it's not about how high the price difference is, but how strong the product's profit-generating ability is. For example, earning 10 yuan per piece, selling 10,000 pieces a year earns 100,000 yuan; if earning 6 yuan per piece, selling 20,000 pieces or more a year, can the profit be the same? Even if the money earned is the same, market share, brand awareness, and brand value are different, laying a foundation for future high-profit products, and the product's vitality will be longer, and the ability to make money will last longer.
V. Brand Maintenance
Many distributors representing brand products have encountered 'channel crossing' (diversion of goods). To avoid this, they must unite, cherish and protect the brands they represent, and not supply goods to areas where the same brand is already distributed. Only in this way can the long-term interests of all distributors be guaranteed. For example, Distributor C makes secret marks on his products, establishes purchase-sale-inventory ledgers for second-tier wholesalers and terminal stores. If a second-tier wholesaler visited and ordered 200 pieces last cycle, and this cycle ordered 100 pieces, he should immediately find the reason: is the product selling slowly, is his service not good, or did they receive cheaper goods from adjacent markets? For competitors using low prices to attack the market, on one hand, send relatives to buy low-priced products; on the other hand, send the manufacturer to cut off the supply source, making competitors retreat.
In short, large distributors develop from small ones. As long as the vast number of small and medium distributors continue to work hard, improve their business, management, and execution capabilities, combine various skills with their actual situation, continuously apply and develop them, they will surely achieve sales breakthroughs.
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